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If Agnieszka Chwaleba had been told five years ago that she would soon be running an exterior lighting business with nine employees, seven service trucks and the ability to take on clients throughout the entire state of Florida, she wouldn’t have believed it. Having studied marketing at Boston University, Agnieszka worked as a media buyer for an advertising agency after college and fully expected her career to continue in that direction. But then, she and husband Leo Murray moved to his hometown of Tampa, where his family owned a lighting maintenance business. In 2006, the couple was inspired to apply his business education and her marketing background to their own lighting maintenance startup.
In the early days, the young entrepreneurs were about as hands on as they could be; Leo took their boom truck out on calls, fixing their clients’ lights himself, while Agnieszka did everything else, from payroll to customer support, from their home office. The newly married launch partners quickly expanded their business, adding their first employee and second truck within six months, and moving to a series of increasingly large sites over the next three years. Today, they have field offices in Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, and their broader client base means they have more control over how and when they next expand their business. Best of all, Agnieszka has come to understand that her passion for effective communication and personal relationships are a key component of success in any industry.
What we learned from Agnieszka: “Ask for help….Hire an accountant. Find a quality company to help you with your Web site. There is somebody who knows the answer to that question….I have that person I call when I have a computer problem. I don’t have to sit here and try to rewire my CPU. There are so many times when I’ve tried to fix things, like phone problems. Don’t do that. There are people who do that. I think, sometimes, it’s just getting over that idea: It’s going to be so costly. Whereas, you realize, your time is so valuable that, taking it to go fix something, or create a template, or try to make a postcard to mail to your customers…it’s time you could be using to talk to your customers.”
Get Dressed for Success
“Even when you’re small, and you’re just starting in your living room, show up for work. Get dressed. Put on your most professional clothes. Show up. I think, sometimes, people don’t take their job seriously enough. They say, ‘Oh, it’s just my small business.’ Well, you know what? That’s a real business. Make it count. If it’s important to you, then you should treat it as such.”
It’s Okay to Say No
“When you start, especially in our case, any time a job came up, we took it. Saying, ‘No,’ was not an option, whether that meant overextending ourselves, or having to work straight through the weekend, or whatever else, we’d do it. But then, you start learning, slowly, that saying, ‘No’ is not such a bad thing. And that, sometimes, the quality of the customer, and the quality of the work, is so much more important than just being a ‘Yes’ man. And so, I think we had to kind of stop at some point and say, ‘Okay, can we grow [in a way] where it’s controlled?”
Not All Customers Are Created Equal
“Once we started focusing on which of our customers are really the people we want to focus our time and effort on, that’s when we started seeing growth. As I think you’re working with more quality people, and you’re providing them with quality work, there’s less frustration, and it builds everybody up. The technicians are happier. It makes you want to go get more good customers. You’re getting referrals. They’re passing you on. Other customers are seeing you on the sites of their competitors and saying, ‘Wait, come do work for us.’”
Communication Is Key
“One thing that I’ve found is really important for our business, and I think it’s really what’s gotten us this far, is I’m just an obsessive communicator. If you’re emailing me, I’m already writing you back as I’m reading it. I’m constantly getting back to people, giving them answers, even if the answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ People just want to know. And something as technical as what we’re doing, with electrical work, it’s not like some property manager in her office is going to climb up a ladder to see what’s wrong with her sign. She has to trust that you’re actually up there fixing it, and that you’re doing it correctly, and that it will work. So transparency is key with this [business]. And I think that, maybe, a lot of companies haven’t taken that into consideration; that you have to always be in contact with your customer.”
Couples Who Launch Together…
“Having worked for other couples, [one thing I can say] is, absolutely, at all times, be professional. Leave your home life at home. And in your work life, you’ve got to be coworkers. That’s so important, not only for your employees to see, but I think also, for the two of you.”
We Can Talk It Out
“Absolutely, be honest. I think it’s so easy to always talk about the great news, but there’s difficult things, there’s difficult decisions. A lot of what he takes care of in the business is different from what I take care of, and so, sometimes, I might be four or five steps into something before I need his opinion. And he missed all of those five steps, so he doesn’t know how far into it I am, or what decisions I’ve already made. And I think it’s [important to be] constantly checking in: ‘This is happening, this is happening.’ And, sometimes, that can be a little overwhelming, when you’ve had six phone conversations in the past five minutes, and you’ve been keeping in touch with what’s going on with a situation. But I think it takes that.”
What Would an Employee Do?
“Sometimes, I think of myself as an employee, rather than as an owner. And, sometimes, that helps. When you have someone who’s calling you, and they’re asking you questions, or, ‘When are you going to be there?’ Or, ‘We have an emergency. There’s no lights. It’s Friday night.’ You just have to calm down and think, ‘Okay, if I was working for somebody else, I would probably handle this a lot more calmly than I would as an owner. So handle it that way.’ I think that’s helped me, just as sort of a mental trick, to switch off the owner hat.”
Enforce Your Boundaries
“My private time, when I’m not at work, I’m very strict with my schedule. I work out every single morning at the exact same time, no matter what time my first meeting is, or my first phone call. That is my time, and nobody is allowed to talk to me about work at that time. It’s little things like that; and, definitely, keeping my home and my business separate. It’s too much, when you’re sitting around the dinner table, talking about the same things that you should have been talking about at your morning meeting. And I think it’s healthier, too. If every single thought that runs through your head goes back to work, that’s not good.”
Words to Live By
“This is my personal mantra. I have these three words I repeat in my head. I say: ‘Balance, grace and strength.’ I repeat them to myself all the time.”
This Featured Lady was profiled by Sarah Tomlinson, a freelance writer in Los Angeles, California.
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